Few people think more than two or three times a year.....

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. George Bernard Shaw

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As the saying goes “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” I just googled “Restorative Yoga Teacher Training.” Got 208,000 hits! Typed “Yoga Therapy Teacher Training.” Got 2,650,000 hits! Obviously main stream stuff! The majority of the courses typically run from 15 to 40 hours (1 or 2 weekends). There are also longer in-depth courses offered -- usually 200 or 300 hours. I found one teacher training of 1000 hours but it hadn’t actually started. It was just proposed.

One 36-hour course advertises: “This course encompasses all requirements for full certification as Restorative Yoga Teacher.” and “Attendance for all 36 program hours is mandatory to receive certification.” Another 35-hour course honestly declares: “This course is intended for personal development. Successful completion of this course does not certify you as a career yoga teacher.” An 80-hour course advertises that it will prepare you to work with Athletes, Muscular injury, Stress related illness, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Heart disease and Cancer. No mention of a certificate. What is going on in these programs?

The photos on those websites usually depict one or two scenarios. One is a compassionate looking yoga therapist gently adjusting a grateful looking sufferer, which appeals to the basic need of humans to help others. The second shows people propped up on bolsters, highly reminiscent of the poses in a routine that was first published in the Yoga journal in 1988. The message seems to be that we can cure, or at least help those suffering with everything from heart disease to cancer by being compassionate and learning a simple routine in a weekend (or two)!

Someone suggested that a yoga instructor should be at least as well trained as a hair dresser; and of course more training is needed for a yoga therapist. I thought that sounded reasonable. I phoned a local hair school in Calgary. Are you sitting down? Basic class time 1400 hours plus apprenticeship 1400 hours; total: 2800 hours! What about a massage therapist? I checked the Mount Royal University website: 1100 hours for a certificate (9 months full-time) and 2200 hours for a diploma (2 years full-time). But when the graduates of a 200-hour yoga teacher training program are told that “this is only the beginning,” many are shocked. They think they are finished! Take another 36 hours and you can become a certified yoga therapist!

The idea that the practice of yoga is beneficial for one’s health began at least half century ago.According to William J. Broad, author of the controversial book The Science of Yoga, Iyengar’s million book seller, Light on Yogawhich was first published in 1966with its medical language, claims of cures and therapeutic benefits shifted the focus of yoga from magic and eroticism to health.

The health claims made by Iyengar and others were soon investigated by Western scientists. Among them was Dr. Dean Ornish whose book Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease was published in 1990. The book revealed that by following a routine of yoga postures; yogic diet (vegetarian, low fat); relaxation (savasana); smoking cessation; and psychosocial support coronary artery disease could not only be halted but could actually be reversed. Another researcher, Dr. Herbert Benson investigated the physiological changes which occurred during meditation. He discovered that the techniques he was looking at turned on the parasympathetic nervous system (rest, restore, relax, renew). In 1975, nine years after Iyengar’s book Light on Yoga, Benson published a #1 bestseller, The Relaxation Response, in which meditation was demystified. Despite the exaggerated claims still being made by some yoga teachers, main stream yoga was resting on a solid foundation of scientific respectability.

The focus of yoga was now on health. Ornish demonstrated that yoga could be a powerful tool in cardiac rehabilitation while Benson showed that the antidote for stress was relaxation/meditation. Encouraged by the scientific underpinning teachers and studios began to advertise classes for a variety of medical conditions. Names like “Relax and Renew,” “The Stress Buster” and “Yoga for a Better Back” began to show up on studio menus. Who were the cooks? Was anyone trained to teach these new classes? For the most part no one was. Fortunately, a few teachers had training in Western medical health science and were already doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, kinesiologists, massage therapists, etc. It was easy for these teachers to make the connection between what they had studied in school and what they had learned in their yoga training. Other teachers who remembered what they had seen in Indian medical classes mixed the latter with common sense and started to fill the new demand. Then there were some, perhaps most, who began offering therapeutic classes with no specific training at all. They simply watered down their regular routines and served them up under a different name.

In 1988 the Yoga Journal published what may have been their first article on Therapeutic / Restorative yoga: “Therapeutic Yoga - By improving circulation and promoting deep relaxation this therapeutic sequence of asanas is restorative for a variety of health problems,” which was written by Erin Murphy, a well-known yoga teacher in Calgary. While taking a course at the Iyengar Institute in 1985 she collapsed likely due to the choking pollution in Pune. Iyengar assigned a routine to support her lungs, which she later reported in the Yoga Journal. The article and routine can be downloaded here. Because of the deep penetration of the Journal in the international yoga community and the lack of credible therapeutic routines at the time, Erin’s quickly became the standard until today.

Dr. Loren Fishman, who is the Medical Director of Manhattan Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York City and who has written 7 books on yoga for various conditions (arthritis, osteoporosis, back pain, etc.), onceremarked that yoga is at a crossroads, at the intersection of religion and science. It has come from a religious tradition where the authority figure is the Guru into an environment where scientists test claims with double blind studies and statistics. We use scientific language to support our beliefs and to convince others, when convenient. When we are tired of using our brains (admittedly hard work) we find ourselves defensively mouthing “Guru, Master, Maharishi said” to support our arguments.

Both William Broad and Lorne Fishman have suggested that lack of adequate science based teacher training may be responsible for many of the yoga injuries now coming to light. No one has yet publically shone the light of common sense on the training to teach yoga, but given the increasing number of injuries, it will soon come.